Archive for October, 2008

Ryan, Josh, and Chelle don’t think much of it when they steal a few coins from a wishing well for bus fare back home. But to steal the coins from a well spirit is to take on her obligation of granting wishes, and soon the kids find themselves developing the powers to do just that – from the eyes on Ryan’s knuckles that see things they shouldn’t, to Chelle’s newfound ability to speak the thoughts of strangers, to Josh’s sudden affinity with electromagnetism. It’s then that they find that the wishes people make in their hearts are infinitely darker and more dangerous than the ones they speak aloud, and that the changes the well witch has wrought in them go deeper than they think.

Becky: It really was. Too bad we read it way back in 2005, before we started Active Voice. It totally would have gotten a five.

Jess: Maybe we can do, like, a “this is the kind of book that gets a five” joint review.

Becky: Yes! Jess, you are so smart and also pretty.

Jess: I know.

(Jess may have edited this paraphrased conversation a tad.)

When 12-year-old Mosca falls in with a low-rent poet and conman named Eponymous Clent in an effort to escape her miserable, provincial life, she has no idea that she’ll soon be at the center of a dangerous web of political intrigue and rebellion. But no sooner have Mosca, Clent, and Mosca’s homicidal goose Saracen arrived in the city of Mandelion than Mosca finds herself adrift in a world of radicals, conspirators, zealots, mad dukes, highwaymen, heretics, and murderers. Mosca will need all her cunning and grit just to survive. Luckily, she’s got plenty of both.